"15th May, 1880. Three fresh eggs in a nest 20 feet off the ground, and a few yards from my bungalow, in an oorian (Bischoffia javanica, Bl.).
"5th June, 1880. Nest with three partly-incubated eggs, in one of the outer branches of a jack (Artocarpus integrifolia) tree, and about 15 feet off the ground.
"27th May, 1881. Three fresh eggs in a nest on a soom (Machilus odoratissima) tree at the edge of the forest bordering the tea. The nests are deep saucers, 3½ inches in diameter, internally 1½ deep, with the sides about ¼ thick; but the bottom is so flimsy that the eggs are easily seen from below, the materials being grass, roots, and fine tendrils of creepers, especially if these are thorny, when they are used as a lining. The nest is always situated in the fork of a branch."
The nests are large, shallow, King-Crow-like structures, often suspended between forks, sometimes placed between four or five upright shoots, at times resting on a horizontal bough against and attached to some more or less upright shoots. They are composed mainly of roots thinly but firmly twisted together, have sometimes a good deal of cobweb twisted round their outer surface, often a good deal of vegetable fibre used for the same purpose and, though they have no lining, are always composed interiorly of finer material than that used for the outer portion of the structure. Exteriorly the diameter varies from 6 to nearly 7 inches, the height from nearly 2 to 2½; the cavity is usually about 4 inches in diameter and 1·5 to 1·75 in depth. I have taken the nests in May and June alike in small and large trees, at elevations of from 10 to 30 feet from the ground.
Typically the eggs are rather broad ovals, a good deal pointed towards the small end, but they vary a great deal both in size and shape, are occasionally very much elongated, and again, at times, exhibit the characteristic pointing but feebly. The ground-colour varies from greyish white to a delicate pale pink; as a rule the markings are small and inconspicuous frecklings and specklings of pale purple reddish where the ground, is pink, greyish where it is white, tolerably thickly set about the large end and somewhat sparsely elsewhere; but in some eggs these markings are everywhere almost obsolete. In many there is a dull pale purplish cloud underlying the primary markings, extending over the greater part of the large end of the egg. Not uncommonly a few specks and spots of yellowish brown are scattered here and there about the egg. In one egg before me the markings are larger, more decided, and fewer in number—distinct spots, some of them one tenth of an inch in diameter; and in this egg the spots are decidedly brownish red, while intermixed with, them are a few specks and clouds of inky purple. The ground in this case is a pale pinky white.
As a rule the eggs are entirely devoid of gloss, but one or two have a very faint gloss.
The eggs measure from 1·01 to 1·21 in length, and from 0·79 to 0·86 in breadth; but the average of twenty-nine eggs is 1·12 by 0·81.
338. Dissemurulus lophorhinus (Vieill.). The Ceylon Black Drongo.
Dissemuroides lophorhinus (V.), Hume, cat. no. 283 quat.
Colonel Legge says, in his 'Birds of Ceylon':—"This species breeds in the south of Ceylon in the beginning of April. I have seen the young just able to fly in the Opaté forests at the end of this month; but I have not succeeded in getting any information concerning its nest or eggs."